what matters is how your gilfriend feels, not what dan thinks. what part of "I don't want to do sex work" do you not understand?

How are those the only two choices? What field is her grad degree in and what are her employment prospects in her field?
I also think he needs to cop to “we can’t afford it” means “the lifestyle I think I deserve.” There are always people making it on less—downsize your expectations to meet your income. Your girlfriend may prefer Mac and cheese in a condo with a cubic zirconia ring to an inflated lifestyle supported by sex work.

"i have issues with sex work" said she who sleeps with him because he financially supports her. I get her. If I had one guy paying all my bills why would I go out and look for more punters?

This question would have been better answered by sending LW's girlfriend a copy of Arabian Nights.

I don't think LW realizes that his "girlfriend' IS doing sex work and he's the client.

Thank you Dan. What a fucking prick.

High fucking fives all round. Best answer ever!

A bit harsh. He asked her, she's unsure... Didn't say yes, didn't say no. As long as he doesn't pester her and wait for her to decide then what's the problem?

Dan answered the crux of the actual issue, but PIMP, there is also sooooo much wrong with your plan from a financial standpoint.

Best answer ever, Dan! I remembered not only the question but your answer as well from before. Considering I don't remember why I walked into the room half the time, it is a testament to the genius of the answer. In fact, you pulled a WWJD--this response is modeled on Jesus's response to the crowd who wants to stone to death the woman caught in the act of committing adultery: "Great idea! I love it; it's totally appropriate. Who should go first? Oh wait, I've got it: the guy who has never done anything wrong gets to throw his stone first. Okay, step up! Who's it gonna be? Oh, really? None of us is 100% perfect all the time? And you want to kill this particular screw-up? Hmmm . . . " (I paraphrased)

@8: She didn't say she's unsure, she said "has issues with sex work." This is a demurral. It's a 'no,' not an 'I don't know.'

@3 and @5: how very second-wave feminist / Andrea Dworkin / Sheila Jefferys of you both. The lw never said his gf sleeps with him because he supports her. And if he fully supported her, why didn't he pay off her credit card debt, which is what sent her to escorting? Why does he talk about her waitressing while she looks for a more career-related job? They began dating while she was in grad school, and it sounds like only now that she's trying to get her career started, is he helping her out. Because he likes or loves her and because he can.

Here's the letter, which you might want to reread before you pile on her as some sort of user/whore and him as a chump:

"I am a fairly successful man. I don't make bank like Wall Streeters back in the day, but I haven't been hungry since college. My girlfriend is younger. We met when she was in grad school. Like many recent grads, she's not steadily employed, in debt, and driving an unsafe car. So I support her, house her, feed her, and pay her bills (medical, etc.). She needed to pay off her credit-card debt—28 percent interest rate!—so she took work stripping and later as an escort. Through escorting she was able to pay off her credit-card debt in a month.
Now some guys would find this distressing, but I found it kind of hot. Here's the thing: After she paid off her credit-card debt, she stopped escorting. I'd like her to continue part-time until she finds a career. She's mixed on this. We would like to buy a house and make things more permanent, but our income isn't enough to do that if she's making waitress wages. I guess it boils down to this: I would prefer to be with a sex worker than a waitress. I'd rather she make $200/hour on her back than $10/hour on her feet. She says she has issues with sex work. What do you think?"

Have heard Dan give this advice before; still LOQTM’d (laughed out quietly to myself).

This reply genuinely warmed my heart.

@3 and @5: my mom is a little older than my dad and worked fulltime to pay the bills while he went to college. They had a long term plan together and that included one person supporting the other financially for a bit, and he ended up supporting her later. Neither of them is a sex worker because their relationship partially revolved around the realities of living in a capitalist system. It's pretty common for one partner to carry the load for a while (financially, emotionally, whatever) while the other works on other plans. That's what makes relationships precious. The fact that you can rely on each other. It's got nothing to do with sex work, and I can't believe I have to spell that out. The woman's a former sex worker so all her relationships must revolve around it? There's some serious misogyny in these comments that you may want to examine.

@13: Thank you.

fuck the LW you sexist prick
dan, i luv you

L-dub, you sound sketch. There are specifics that others have pointed out, but there is also just a vibe you give off. I would love to advise you to break up with this woman and find someone who is and wants to be a sex worker and have a wonderful romance together, but again... you sound pretty sketch. So, whatever you do, just try to think about the other people in your life and how they might perceive and feel things as independent entities worthy of respect.

The whole situation sounds like a car wreck. LW is a jerk because she's clearly expressed no interest in doing sex work and he's certainly ignoring the amount of bad breath, big bellied, no deodorant wearing clients that he might have worked with to pay off that credit card. At the same time, she's got a graduate degree. She should be employable in a market where employers say they are having a hard time finding qualified employees. And hell, if she gets a job as a waitress in a high-priced restaurant, she'll be making good money. Seems that the move to make is end this thing and he should use the money he's paying for her stuff now to just hire a sex worker who can tell him stories about her other clients as foreplay.

*she might have worked..

This is one of my all-time favorite answers from Dan.

@10 & @13: We have no idea why his girlfriend is actually his girlfriend. One possibility is certainly that she would not be his girlfriend if he were not supporting her.

The only way LW will know for sure is if he withdraws his financial support and she sticks around.

Ms Cute - Dworkinian indeed.

My main response to the question of whether she'd still be sticking around if he weren't supporting her is to wonder whether he'd even know.

I’m curious about the tax issues with her work. This “successful” guy can’t afford a mortgage alone, so he wants her sex work income to help get a house. Does she get W-2 income with her stripping and escort work? Because I had a hell of a time getting a modest mortgage loan, even with a long history of good-paying 1099 income.

While the response was what LW deserved, there is an angle to this that nobody has yet appreciated. No self-respecting gay would want to be this LW's client any more than Sir Thomas Bertram would have enjoyed cutting for partners at whist and drawing his wife. (The Humpty Dumpty word is self-respecting.) (Technically, unless Sir Thomas were a purist who cared mainly for fine play, advising Lady Bertram to opt for speculation instead was a tactical error, as there was a 2/3 chance she would draw as his opponent.)

LW should remember to charge extra for "choking down" loads instead of spitting them out. I'd advise at least four price levels, from cheap to expensive: condomed blowjob - bare blowjob without coming in mouth - bare blowjob with coming in mouth - bare blowjob with swallowing.

You sir, are disgusting. I hope this girl left you long ago. Fine if you want to change the economic conditions, and she needs to find better paying work, or move. To try and steer her towards sex work she no longer wants to do: you don’t own this woman.

You can strip away all the "$10/hour waitress" and "afford to buy a house" bullshit because it all boils down to "I found it. . . hot".

This could even be a good relationship - one in which they each learned something important. He's learned he's got a cuckold / partner-is-a-sex-worker kink. She's learned she doesn't like doing sex work and that she doesn't want a pimp. The next and last lesson they need to learn is that they are not good partners for each other.

“I’d rather she make $200/ hour on her back, that $10 on her feet.” Says it all.

Run, Ms PIMP, run!!

Dan, you rule. Great comment from Biggie @5 too. It's no coincidence that PIMP found a younger woman and voluntarily started paying all her bills. She's a sugar baby, but even so, she should have the final say over whether she has one client or many. I hope she's been saving up behind his back so she can leave him once she's financially stable, but who knows, she may dig being a sugar baby. Either way, PIMP has no right to push her on this. Perhaps they can bring sex worker fantasy talk into their relationship, but that's as far as it should go since she "has issues with sex work." They could also discuss hotwifing if she is into it, but he absolutely should not monetise a kink that requires her unwilling participation. Buy the house on your own, dude -- you'll be glad you did in five years' time when she has an established career and leaves you.

Wait. Why does he get to stop at giving head? Dude needs to do whatever he's being paid for.

Venn @24: Don't worry. I'm sure there are plenty of "straight" men who could be PIMP's clients. :)

Dude’s watched “Pretty Woman” too many times.

I love Dan's answer.

I'd still like to separate the LW's /two/ issues with his GF not wanting to continue to do sex work:

A. Wanting her to make more money. Well, chosen acronym, you PIMP piece of shit.

B. Being turned on by her having sex with other guys. PIMP, give her a free pass to! Then if she wants she can have sex with guys she /wants/ to have sex with.

Not immediately obvious like the spell casters, but @36 is a spammer. Reported.

Curious @35: Is he turned on by her having sex with other guys? He said "Through escorting she was able to pay off her credit-card debt in a month" and that he "found it kind of hot".

My read was that "it" is her paying off her credit-card debt in a month by doing sex work - the real sex work that Dan described - and not the hotwife thing. Perhaps he gets off on her being used by random men for money?

Either way, Dan nailed it. Zing!

Yeah, maybe he's getting off on the idea that he's getting for free what other men have to pay for. Who knows. I also missed that this letter is a re-run, so hopefully Ms PIMP got a decent paying job and a new boyfriend who's happy with her doing whatever work she wants, and PIMP found a new sex worker girlfriend who likes her chosen career.

@37 Registered European
I nearly reported it too but I concluded (despite the poor communication skills) that it was not spam. (Because the URL is for a site that sells college papers, which I thought seemed relevant since the LW's GF has a graduate degree.)

But now that I've checked their posting history (which I thought they had!), I see the account started today and the same URL was posted on a /news/ thread, so well done RE!

@38 fubar
I see what you mean, it isn't clear what the asshole PIMP finds hot. I wish I never posted that; even if I'd been right I hesitated to make that asshole happy.

"My girlfriend does not want to do sex work, but I found it hot. How can I force her to have sex with strangers?"

Fucking gross.

Hum. Here I thought I’d have plenty to say on this one, but Dan and commenters covered it pretty well.

I will add a few things:

1) $200 an hour sounds nice, but it doesn’t actually work out to be $200 an hour. Back in the Backpage days, for every hour I spent with a client I spent 2-3 unpaid hours advertising, taking pictures, and communicating with clients via email, making my hourly wage $50-65. Since Backpage went down (after which point I got 90% fewer queries) the ratio is more like 5:1. That’s 5 unpaid hours for every paid hour, meaning that my hourly wage is now around $35. $35 an hour isn’t bad, to be sure, but it’s not $200. If you work for an agency, they find clients for you, but it’s hit-or-miss whether they find you many, and they take a big chunk of what you earn, plus they usually have a no-compete clause so you can’t take outside work. There ARE high-end escorts out there (mostly in big cities) who make a mint, but they’re a tiny minority.

In addition to the wages not being as great as you’re thinking, when you’re self-employed you don’t get paid sick leave, health insurance, pension / 401K contributions, dental, any of that stuff. Of course, she probably doesn’t get most of that as a waitress either, but she might well get some of it from a different job in her chosen field.

2) You don’t mention what her field is, or whereabouts you live, but it’s entirely possible that if it gets out that she’s done sex work (even in the past) it will prevent her from working in her field of study. Even here in Europe, where we’re mostly a lot more easy-going about such things than most of the US, being a sex worker - or more to the point, people KNOWING I was a sex worker - will disqualify me from certain jobs (if I want to work with teenagers again? Forget it) and be unofficially held against me in others. If you’re in the US, getting outed and getting a criminal record is a legitimate worry.

3) It sounds like your girlfriend fell into sex work out of panic at her credit card bill. That’s totally understandable; I fell into it out of panic at my finances after my disability got dropped. Now that she’s paid off her credit card, she doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or perhaps she thought it might be for her, tried it out, and found that it wasn’t. Either way, she doesn’t want to do it, and you need to respect that. It’s fine that you find it hot. Its fine that you have fantasies about being rich. It’s not fine to try and force her back into it when she doesn’t want to be doing it. I like my job well enough - it’s neither the best nor the worst job I’ve ever had - but there are plenty of reasons NOT to do sex work. It’s often mentally and emotionally exhausting, and that goes double for introverts. Clients are often unattractive. Clients are sometimes physically dangerous. It’s not entirely safe, healthwise - condoms take a lot of the risk away, but you’re constantly in danger of herpes and HPV, and I’m frequently off with yeast infections, despite pre/probiotics and good hygiene and diet. The hours are strange - they were great when I was dating a bartender, not great now I’m dating a dentist. The amount of time and money that you have to put into looking good - working out, haircuts, manicures, pedicures, callus peels, depilation, makeup, lingerie - is immense.

I’m not sure if Dan was being snarky or not when he suggested you try sex work for yourself, but I’d echo the sentiment, and I mean that in all seriousness. Do some research to figure out what you can charge in your area. Find a dozen websites where you can post an ad, and get some decent photos taken. And then go to town. Maybe you’ll find you like it. Or maybe you’ll find out why your girlfriend doesn’t.

(For the record, I’m in the UK, where it’s legal. I translated prices to dollars since I assume most readers here are in the US.)

"choked down a few hundred loads" Hey, a lot of straight men who've tasted their own cum say it tastes fine. So assuming he'll have to choke those loads down is not warrented, he may enjoy most of them.

Other than that, excellent advice.

@42 Thank you for flagging the wage/hour issue. People were shocked to hear what I used to make as a model per hour. But there's a HUGE difference between a fee per hour and an actual hourly income. Having to create your own jobs is a fulltime endeavor on top of the actual work you're advertising. When you factor in actual hours working on everything outside the actual job, suddenly that $80/hour for modeling isn't so outrageous anymore.

@42 Thanks for your insight.

Here are a few options:

1 - Go out at night with friends, have fun, come home and tell your husband somebody paid to have his entire football team gangbang you. This can be repeated endlessly

2 - Fuck the shit out of your Work Husband, or the cute barista, or whoever you wanna fuck, then tell your husband that the guy paid.

3 - Role play your husband paying you for sex. He can "pick you up from work" like a john, pay you $20 for a BJ in the car, then you can take the bus home like you would have anyhow.

Making things "more permanent" doesn't require buying a house any more than a low wage reflects a commitment level. Men who act like they're doing more just because they make more are dirt - I hope she DTMFA.

@5, there's an old saying in poker: if you look around the table and can't figure out who the patsy is, it's you.

A couple of points, one of which was raised above. So, he's pulling in decent money (not at the same levels at the Wall Streeters) ... but can't afford to buy a house UNLESS....

The other one is that he probably thinks she's stupid. After all, why should she be a waitress (on her feet), wearing herself out all day for crappy pay when she could be doing almost nothing (lying on her back) ,,, because, as we all know /sarcasm, sex work isn't work at all?

Finally, when SHE decided on sex work for a limited period for a specific goal (paying off the credit card), she most likely anticipated how long she'd need to work to pay it off. It's one thing to do work you don't like (or even loathe) if there's an expiry date. You mark the days off, one by one, knowing that you'll soon be free of having sex with people you don't like.

You go, 2009 Dan. That douchenozzle deserved every bit of the contempt dripping from your answer.

Excellent answer, Dan. LW - Are you f-ing kidding me? How narcissistic are you? You want your girlfriend to continue selling her body to strange men for money, putting her physical and emotional health at risk, because it's a turn-on for YOU? The world is not your personal porn channel. Women actually have aspects to them that don't include turning you on. Hard to believe I know. Apologize to your girlfriend for suggesting it, never mention it to her again, and move on.

Shorter LW: "I'd rather have an unhappy girlfriend than having a poor girlfriend"